issue 29 | Spring 2015

New Dementia Advice Service p2

Shifting the Balance of Care p3

Psychology of Parenting project p4

Tackling Child Poverty p4

this issue...

newsletter for staff working in CHCP

For more information about the CHCP go to www.westlothianchcp.org.uk

Jennifer began her working life in 1972 as a teacher with Strathclyde Region and assistant principal of guidance, one of the first guidance posts in Scotland. She changed career in 1992, coming to work in West Lothian as an assistant manager of the residential child care centre in Bathgate.

Jennifer moved on to a senior social worker post in the Resource Team (now known as the Family Placement Team) and then to a service development role in 2001, where she can count among her notable achievements the development of the Youth Inclusion Project, Strathbrock Family Unit and a range of specialist resources for looked after children.

Passionate about children’s rights, Jennifer was granted honorary membership of the Having Your Say Forum for looked after children and young people in 2013 (to read an interview Jennifer recently gave to two young people from Having Your Say go to www.westlothianchcp.org.uk/interview).

Having worked tirelessly as head of service during a time of unprecedented change, Jennifer plans to enjoy quality time with her children and grandchildren. Jennifer’s vision, passion and enthusiasm will be sorely missed by her colleagues across West Lothian.

NHSLothian

West Lothian Community Health and Care Partnership

www.westlothianchcp.org.uk

Two foundation dentists Niall McGoldrick and Orna Ni Choileain have won the “Voluntary Service Award” at the NHS Lothian Celebrating Success Awards 2014.

They were nominated for being the driving force behind Let’s Talk About Mouth Cancer, a campaign to raise awareness of mouth cancer across Lothian. The campaign has seen free mouth cancer screening events across Lothian, as well as lectures to local dental professionals on the importance of the prevention and early detection of mouth cancer. The judges were extremely impressed with their enthusiasm in setting up and organising the campaign.

The team are holding their next awareness drive in March 2015 with further screening and educational events taking place across Lothian. You can find all the details on: www.letstalkaboutmouthcancer.co.uk

Campaign Award

Let’s Talk About Mouth Cancer Trustees from L-R Ewan MacKessack-Leitch, Orna Ni Choileain, Niall McGoldrick, Stephanie Sammut and Professor Victor Lopes

Farewell JenniferJennifer Scott, Head of Social Policy, will be missed greatly when she retires from the council at the end of March after a long and successful career.

For more information on any of the articles email: info@westlothianchcp.org.uk

A day in the life of The Crisis Care Team

The Pensioner Income Maximisation Service (PIMS) works closely alongside Macmillan Cancer Support and helps people who are over 60 or anyone who has a long term health condition.

The PIMS service launched a new awareness campaign in May 2014 to help people living with Dementia including families and carers. PIMS will check entitlement to benefits such as Attendance Allowance, Pension Credit, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Reduction or exemption and will help through the claim process from phoning

for forms to filling them in. Home visits can be arranged for those clients who are unable to get into the Advice Shop.

The Advice Shop is based in Bathgate and also has outreach sessions across West Lothian.

For more information please contact: 01506 283000 option 2 or email: pims@westlothian.gov.uk

Welcome to our day!The Crisis Care Team (CCT) was formed in February 2012 to act as a single point of contact for referrers to provide a 24/7 service for people in the community experiencing a health or social care emergency, as well as developing partnership working with community nursing services. The team respond to anyone in West Lothian who is experiencing a health or social care emergency which, with support from the team, will avoid admission to hospital. This support can be assisting someone who has fallen or who has raised a telecare alert through the Home Safety Service or providing short term personal care supports (up to 5 days).

The team aims to respond to someone who has fallen or raised a telecare alert within 45 minutes. In 2014 they responded to 3,254 callouts with an average response time of 25 minutes. The team also provided 168 short term planned supports in order to prevent admission to hospital.

The team works round the clock and consists of two team leaders, two senior support workers and a further 16 care workers all based within the Careline control centre in the Civic Centre, Livingston. Three shifts cover a 24 hour period with a handover meeting taking place to update on callouts, ongoing cases and pass on any concerns and ensure continuity of care for service users at the start of each shift.

The first point of contact for the team is through the Careline staff who take details of the referral and pass this information to the team to respond.

Some examples of the variety of call outs during the day:

• The day shift start responding to emergency callouts which could have been generated from housing associations, district nurses, GPs, A&E, social work, service users, family members, fire service, police or REACT (Rapid Elderly Assessment and Care Team) or Ambulance Service. The team leader is passed a call from Careline where the service user has pressed her pendant but is not responding to the Careline operator. CCT staff arrive at the property where they discover the lady in bed. Her usual carers had not arrived, CCT assess the situation and assist the lady with her personal care needs. Back at the office the team leader alerts the care provider of the situation and also the case worker of their intervention.

• To prevent hospital admission, REACT asked CCT to provide support over and above REACT’s planned visits to assist with transfers and personal care needs. The team leader starts to plan these visits amongst other call outs and confirms the arrangements with staff from REACT.

• Call from the Fire Service asking for CCT to attend and assist with a fall, staff arrive on site and assist the

service user back up using the ‘Mangar Elk’, an inflatable cushion which when inflated helps

the person to a sitting position where they can then be easily helped to stand.

In between calls the staff work tirelessly round the clock continually responding to emergencies. The work of the team in the community resulted in the Crisis Care Team, in conjunction with the Re Ablement Team, being awarded the ‘Team of the Year’ trophy in the West Lothian Council Celebrating Success awards in 2013.

New Dementia Advice Service West Lothian Council’s Advice Shop gives free, confidential advice to residents on a range of matters from housing, money, debt advice, energy and benefits.

Shifting the Balance of Care

New Dementia Advice Service

For more information on any of the articles email: info@westlothianchcp.org.uk

Mostly these patients will have been in hospital and require additional support with personal care to safely return home.

A variety of services such as community nursing and domiciliary care often work together to provide temporary care for such patients. As a result many advantages were identified through this close working across health and social care. So, when setting up the new interim care service the decision was made to jointly recruit from health and social care and for senior staff to work together to interview, select, train and manage this group of staff - further developing the culture of joint working across services.

New posts were advertised in both social care and health care portals and managers from each service interviewed the applicants ensuring that all the applicants understood the joint working structure of the team and gained insight into the culture of collaborative service provision.

The new starts will receive induction training from the social policy training department in conjunction with staff from health. This ensures that staff will be up to date with policies and procedures relevant to both service areas increasing familiarity with staff from both service areas and continuing to embed the culture of working across service areas as one joined up team.

New Interim Care at Home Team The new Interim Care at Home Team, based at Strathbrock, is set up to provide interim care packages for people waiting for provision of a care package.

The team also prevents admission through the Hospital at Home team. Some patients already have sufficient support in place for rehab at home to be possible with only Physiotherapy/Occupational Therapy to assess and guide intervention. However others return home with increased support needs that require Reablement and REACT to work jointly.

Where joint working is required, communication between all parties is essential. This takes many forms: joint visits with patients in their own homes; face-to-face discussions between therapists and assessors; written shared care plans that result; or telephone updates when required. This communication is essential for updating each service on patient progress, or difficulties, and often relies on the support workers of Reablement as a vital link between patient and services. The support workers are also essential contributors to the rehabilitation model of input required to achieve progress for each patient. For this to be effective, REACT therapists will visit to set

goals and intervention plans, which are conveyed to the lead assessors and transcribed into the patient care plans.

In addition to written instruction, REACT therapists can complete joint visits with the Reablement support workers. This enables specific direction to be given/support offered where circumstances are challenging. Where this is the case, joint working also increases the confidence for the patient/family that all teams are working together.

Additionally, Reablement is a crucial element for the Hospital at Home service. Where a care need is longer term than the five days of Crisis Care support, but nonetheless expected to improve, Reablement can be requested to support. In this situation, REACT provide the essential information required for environmental risk assessment, thereby reducing service pressures in reablement and speed up patient support.

REACT (Rapid Elderly Assessment and Care Team) offers an alternative to hospital admission for over 75s.

Rapid Elderly Assessment and Care Team

For more information about the CHCP go to www.westlothianchcp.org.uk

Integration of health and social careImplementation of the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014 will take a step closer this month with the submission of the West Lothian Integration Scheme to the Scottish Government. The scheme outlines the new arrangements for the integration of health and social care in West Lothian.

A copy of the scheme will be posted on the CHCP website www.westlothianchcp.org.uk as soon as it is available.

contact usWest Life is published three times a year and made available to all CHCP employees. We welcome your feedback on anything covered in this issue and suggestions for future issues.

Please contact: info@westlothianchcp.org.uk

The next deadline for copy is Friday 15 May 2015

Psychology of Parenting Project

This three year project is aimed at improving the availability of high-quality evidence-based parenting programmes (Incredible Years Basic and Triple P Level 4) for families with young children (aged 3 and 4 years) who have elevated levels of behaviour problems. Research indicates that without effective interventions the outcomes for these children are poor and the cost to the public purse high.

In 2013 West Lothian CHCP was selected as a Wave 1 Implementer Site and in June 2014 year one of delivery was completed with exciting results summarised below:

• 34 practitioners delivered groups;

• 28 groups delivered in year one;

• 145 parents/carers (125 children) successfully completed groups;

• 83% of children reported as

having improved behaviour;

• 37 children from 68 moved off the high-risk scale of conduct disorder;

• 25 of the 37 moved into normal range;

• A Looked After Child returned home; and

• Minimum cost avoidance of £76,250 over the next 18 months.

The Psychology of Parenting Project (PoPP) is a Government sponsored project being rolled out through Community Health and Care Partnerships.

For more information on the project and how to apply for support contact popp@westlothian.gov.uk

Tackling Child PovertyThe Citizens Advice Bureau has recently employed three staff to work on their Prevention and Intervention Money Advice Project (PIMAP).

This new project works under the Early Years Collaborative to reduce child poverty in partnership with the NHS and

West Lothian Council. The project primarily works with midwives in areas identified as having high child poverty figures. The midwives refer pregnant women to the project to ensure they are receiving the best advice possible on housing, benefits, debt and relationships, to name but a few. The project is open to any resident of West Lothian who is

pregnant or has a young family, however, the project will focus on areas where numbers

of children living in poverty are highest, namely Craigshill, Armadale,

Blackburn, Blackridge, Fauldhouse and Whitburn. The project is funded through Scottish Legal Aid Board by Money Advice Service until 30 September 2016. For more

details telephone 01506 444814 or 07718 003644 or email pimap@

cabwestlothian.casonline.org.uk